


BIFURCATED

by rezi



Category: Homestuck, Machine of Death - ed. Bennardo/Malki/North
Genre: A Cool Sword, F/M, Homestuck Shipping World Cup 2014
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-01
Updated: 2014-07-01
Packaged: 2018-02-07 01:21:57
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 3
Words: 1,717
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1879659
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rezi/pseuds/rezi
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>There's a machine that can tell you how you die. And though your death is forever set in stone, knowing it can change your life.<br/>Sollux and Terezi know what fate they're locked into, but that doesn't mean they can't make the most of it.<br/>Though what "making the most of it" means is debatable...</p><p>A bonus round fill for HSWC 2014.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

"LEFT HANGING," she reads. Shrug. "Could have been worse." She's always had a morbid fascination with nooses, but imagining herself swinging from one... perhaps that's too morbid, even for her. 

"BIFURCATED. Seriously?" Sollux stares at the paper as if it just shot an insult in his face. "It's like fate is obsessed with entwining my destiny with the number fucking two. Couldn't I be trifurcated instead? Would that be so difficult? Or maybe I would like to stay in one piece! Wow, universe! You would never have thought that was a possibility otherwise! I'm trying this again, give me a decent death this time--"

Terezi grabs his hand. Weird how, even as a blind girl, she can always sense where he is. "You'll probably get the same thing! You know how the machine is. It never does what you want it to."

He still doesn't hesitate to stick his finger back in the machine. Flinches a second time as the needle jabs him again. And another slip of paper prints itself out. With his non-bloody hand, he snatches the paper and holds it up to his glasses, hoping his eyes are deceiving him.

"BIFURCATED."

Terezi rocks back and forth on her heels oh-so-innocently, smiling as sweetly as someone with that many teeth can. "I don't want to say I told you so, but..." 

"Oh, fuck off." He rips the slip in half. The other one too, for good measure. Two pairs of torn paper pieces drift to the ground. 

"Bifurcation is interesting!" Terezi gushes, sweet smile having now gone The Full Morbid. "That'll be an exciting death. No boring person dies by being cut in half!"

He shrugs. "I'll probably just die of a headache while bifurcating code--"

Terezi's grabbed his shoulders. She brings her face right up to his: "Listen up, you sulky honey-flavoured mess." 

 _God, I hate it when she calls me those stupid names,_  he thinks, still loving it.

"You can't spend your life doing nothing! If you get bifurcation, you should get a life thrilling enough to get cut in half at the end." The smile becomes a smirk: "And I know how to get you one."

He knows from experience that Terezi's ideas often go very, very wrong. He also knows that she's right. He can't let life get him down, not if he's only got so much of it to live.

"Fine."


	2. Chapter 2

"Holy fuck, that's a sword."

"Try it out!" she grins.

So he does. Stepping way back from her and anything else, he takes an experimental swing -- it glides through the air too well and almost flies into the wall. He clutches it tight, though, and keeps it from doing any damage.

Even from a few feet away, she feels the gust of air it propels. It comes with a buzz of excitement.

"Do it again!" she shrieks with delight.

He does it again. And again, and again. He loves the way the blade slices silently through air, how its perfect balance makes it feel like a natural extension of his own body, how he is basically a ninja right now.

Something smashes!

"Careful!" Terezi berates him, feeling around the floor for broken bits of vase. Slashed flowers in every crazy colour imaginable litter the floor.

"Shit." Snapped out of his ninja coma, he scratches his neck awkwardly with the hand not holding the sword. "Yeah, this was a terrible idea. Why did you even get me this thing in the first place?"

A short pause. He feels her measuring up his tone of voice, then replying in kind: "You just need practice! Besides, I know you know how cool that was. Of course you want to do it more, don't you?"

More of her bullshit is the last thing he needs. "Yes, that answered my question. The one about what the fuck we need this for. I'm not going to destroy everything we have for no good reason!"

Again, a response weighed out carefully: "You only have so much of a life to live. Why not use it to do something good for the world? Something big and exciting that no one else would dare to do?"

"What, become a professional vase destroyer?"

She chuckles a little, softer than usual. "No, not destroying vases! Though the amount you complain about the crazy colours, you'd probably want it!"

He snorts a little. "Now that'd be doing good for the world."

She smiles, seeming uncharacteristically shy. Maybe it's genuine, more likely it's just to draw him in...

 _That never works on me,_ he thinks, still falling for it.

"I always had this dream," she reminisces out loud, "of doing what was right. Of bringing justice to the places that needed it most. But the law these days is so clunky and slow! People get away with things they should never be allowed to do. I want to put that right. I want..." She pads over to him, resting a hand on his sword-wielding hand. "I want _us_  to put that right."

But he backs away. He can resist the softened stare of those eyes. Hell, they can't even see him! "Who says I want to be involved in this? Maybe I'd be happy to waste away and die of boredom. You can be whatever kind of crazy vigilante you want to be yourself. But don't you fucking dare drag me into your batshit schemes. I'm through."

He looks at her expectantly, but no answer. There's nothing but a silence left hanging between them.

God, she's terrible. Look at that face. Looks like she's just had her heart broken. He knows she's only doing it to make him feel guilty, to guilt him into this and probably get them both killed...

But he remembers the slip of paper and remembers they were both going to die anyway.

The sword's still in his hand. He hasn't let go of it through all this, and he realises he doesn't want to. Just a few more paces back...

He's never getting over how smoothly it glides, the perfection of the arc it traces through the air. Slicing cleanly through someone's neck, bifurcated in a single swish... with this sword, it'd be doing them a favour. 

"I'll do it."


	3. Chapter 3

She is judge. She is jury. He is executioner.

He is _terrified._

She'd rationalised this perfectly beforehand, as she has an annoying habit of doing. But simple words, no matter how much sense they make, aren't enough when you're about to take someone's life. Not innocent, for sure, but...

He replays the words in your head, hoping maybe they'll reassure him the second time round.

_We can't think of death how we used to any more. The Machine's changed all that for good. It's no longer an uncertain future thing that you have to avoid at all costs. You know what you'll have. You know how it'll happen. And nothing prevents your fate._

You're nothing but a tool of fate. That's all.

He'd made a joke then about her calling him a tool, and the tension had dispersed.

He's not laughing now.

God, this feels wrong. He knows this guy's done awful things, and he definitely had wanted to kill the guy when Terezi told him exactly what they were.

Now he's creeping through the rafters of the actual guy's house, and all that is miles away. The idea of actually going up to him? Running the blade through him, letting him fall to the ground?

Fate needs to go back to the tool shop. 

... that sounded better in his head. Where, technically, it still is -- saying it out loud would alert the guy to his presence, just asking to be bifurcated...

He's stalling.

Buzzing with nervous energy, he finally takes a step forward. Progress. That's something. Another step, another step--

A creak.

Suddenly his brain's in overdrive. Someone heard that, he _knows_ someone did, he's fucked it all up, _bifurcation here I come..._

Nothing ensues. 

He breathes. He's safe. Gotta keep moving. 

He takes another step forward, heavy with relief--

The wood snaps and he crashes straight through. 

His right hand is skewered by a splinter as he crashes to the floor. With his non-bloody hand, he snatches up the sword again and clambers to his feet.

And comes face to face with the man himself. The man and his gun.

Never bring a knife to a gun fight, huh? He can see where that advice came from. Outclassed, hopeless...

The man shoots. Yet by what must be a million-to-one chance, the bullet ricochets off his raised blade and buries itself in the opposing wall.

Sollux swings the sword randomly. No grace, just panic. And no accuracy, either: it grazes the man's shoe. Shit.

He feels him measuring up the angles, then replying in kind: finger on the trigger. Sollux drops just in time, bullet shooting over his head.

Terezi told him to contact her if anything went wrong. His hand dives for his phone, scrambling for the keys that will call her and maybe save her life, at least. The man towers over him...

Sollux's focus is split in two. Too busy fending off the attacker to warn Terezi, too busy concentrating on her to save his own life. If only his attention wasn't so bifurca--

*** 

They've always found it weird how, even as a blind girl, she can always sense where he is. But she finds it weirdest being cut off from him like this. Right now, he's lost to her.

Her phone rings; she panics. They can't hear that from down there, can they? She's on the roof, she should be fine. But if they can, she might be in as much trouble as... he must be...

She picks up the phone. On the other end is silence. No answer, no begging for help. Then, with a crunch, the line goes dead.

Should she get out? Should she go to help him? She has no idea what's going on and it's _frustrating!_

She sits there deciding for a second or two, weighing up the evidence. That's all the time her killer needs to sneak up behind her.

She's almost furious as she feels the blade plunge through air. Sollux could have warned her! But no, he had to go and leave her hangi--

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Mostly unrelated to the story (feel free to skip merrily past if you've never read any of my other fics):
> 
> Observant readers of my fics may have (or, realistically, probably won't have) noticed that a fair few of my fics have ~magically disappeared~ from my user page. This is not due to magic, as magic is FAKE, but due to a wonderful little thing called the "Orphan Work" button. This means they're still out there, floating around in the AO3ther, just not associated with my username any more.
> 
> I've done that to those fics in particular for one or more of three reasons:  
> 1) I'm working on something similar that is far better than it will ever be (example: this fic in comparison to [my previous Machine of Deathstuck fic](http://archiveofourown.org/works/1154494))  
> 2) I just wasn't happy with the fic (example: [this could have been cool, if I hadn't vastly overestimated the amount of free time I'd have to do it in](http://archiveofourown.org/works/988603))  
> 3) It was JUST PLAIN AWFUL (example: [what the hell is this, can it die in a hole please](http://archiveofourown.org/works/831434))
> 
> Thank you for your time. *bows and vanishes into a cloud of fanfiction*


End file.
